Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States

391 Pages·2007·1.687 MB·English

by  Sheila Jasanoff

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Designs on Nature
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Designs on Nature
Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States
Sheila Jasanoff
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS • PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2005 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock,
Oxfordshire OX20 1SY
All Rights Reserved
Fourth printing, and first paperback printing, 2007
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-691-13042-2
Paperback ISBN-10: 0-691-13042-6
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows
Jasanoff, Sheila.
Designs on nature : science and democracy in Europe and United States / Sheila Jasanoff.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-691-11811-6 (cloth : acid-free paper)
1. Democracy and science—Europe. 2. Democracy and science—United States. I. Title.
Q127.E8J37 2005
338.9(cid:2)26—dc22
2004055296
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Goudy
Printed on acid-free paper. (cid:3)
pup.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
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Contents
LISTOFFIGURESANDTABLES vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
ABBREVIATIONSANDACRONYMS xi
Prologue 1
Chapter 1
Why Compare? 13
Chapter 2
Controlling Narratives 42
Chapter 3
A Question of Europe 68
Chapter 4
Unsettled Settlements 94
Chapter 5
Food for Thought 119
Chapter 6
Natural Mothers and Other Kinds 146
Chapter 7
Ethical Sense and Sensibility 171
Chapter 8
Making Something of Life 203
Chapter 9
The New Social Contract 225
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CONTENTS
Chapter 10
Civic Epistemology 247
Chapter 11
Republics of Science 272
APPENDIX: CHRONOLOGY 293
NOTES 295
REFERENCES 339
INDEX 361
vi
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Figures and Tables
Figures
1.1 Structure of DNA 33
1.2 Recombinant DNA Technology 35
6.1 The Spaces of Political Delibration 169
Tables
1.1 National Profiles of Biotechnology 31
1.2 Comparative Political Systems 31
3.1 European Parliament Elections: Voter Turnout, 1979–2004 74
3.2 British, German, and European Attitudes
toward Biotechnology in 2002 86
3.3 EurobarometerBiotechnology Quiz, 2002 87
5.1 Prince Charles’s Ten Questions on GM Food 125
6.1 Reproductive Choices—Permitted and Prohibited Actions 169
10.1 Civic Epistemologies—A Comparative View 259
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Acknowledgments
T
his book is the product of much travel and many transitions, and the debts
I owe are correspondingly various. I would like first to acknowledge two U.S.
government organizations that encouraged me to look at biotechnology as
a subject of political analysis long before the hot winds of politics began
blowing across this field in the 1990s. The now dissolved Office of Technol-
ogy Assessment (OTA) was an early supporter. The case studies I wrote for
OTA’s 1984 study of international developments in biotechnology and for its
1987 report on the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution laid the foundation
for an enduring interest in the politics of the life sciences. I am also ex-
tremely grateful for a grant from the National Science Foundation (“The
‘New’ Politics of Biotechnology: A Comparative Study,” grant no. 8911157)
that allowed me to convert my diffuse interests into a systematic comparative
project.
Several universities and research centers provided crucial intellectual
and logistical resources at key moments in the project’s development. Cornell
University offered a splendidly collegial home for many years of border-crossing
work that included the early stages of this study. Yale Law School and Wolfson
College generously supported my research during leaves in New Haven and
Oxford. Two remarkable institutions—the Rockefeller Foundation’s heavenly
Bellagio Study Center and the incomparable Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin—
made room for imagination to flower and thought to deepen while facilitating
research and writing in every possible way. The John F. Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard, where I have been since 1998, offered many valued
opportunities for interaction with students and colleagues during the final
phases of the project.
The book has benefited greatly from the opportunities I have had to pre-
sent some of its arguments at several universities. I would like to thank in par-
ticular Brown University, Iowa State University, the University of Minnesota,